/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package org.apache.geode.internal.lang;

/**
 * The Ordered interface defines a contract for implementing classes who's instances must participate in some type
 * of ordered data structure, such as an array or List, or exist in a context where order relative to other
 * peer instances matter.
 * <p/>
 * @since GemFire 6.8
 */
public interface Ordered {

  /**
   * Gets the order of this instance relative to it's peers.
   * <p/>
   * @return an integer value indicating the order of this instance relative to it's peers.
   */
  public int getIndex();

  /**
   * Sets the order of this instance relative to it's peers.
   * <p/>
   * @param index an integer value specifying the the order of this instance relative to it's peers.
   */
  public void setIndex(int index);

}
